Strangely missing from the NYT’s Most-Mailed Stories List (at least at 4 EST today) is this bit= about Dean’s draft dodging. He got a deferrment for “his condition. It is aggravated by certain kinds of physical activity but not all kinds, she said. The condition is called spondylolysis, a low-back pain that sometimes radiates into the legs…

Dr. Dean said it was the military’s decision to grant him the deferment, but he also said he was eager to get it. Had he wanted to serve, he probably could have

Even Slashdot types are pretty much against electronic voting. But the best part of the thread is the just the general viturpitude and quotes like:

How does this imply that there is a great conspiricy? Lots of people give money to the republicans. Lots of people write crappy software. Lots of businesses try to get away with things that they shouldn’t. Where is the proof that the reason for their actions is that they want the hand the election over to the republicans? It is just as likely that they are just incompetent and greedy, not conspiratal (sic).

Andrew Stuttaford at The Corner while citing this story, has possibly the best argument against e-voting to date: “Part of the problem with these systems is the conspiracy theories that they are bound to generate, something that will be deeply damaging to American democracy, particularly, if as seems likely, we are about to go through an unusually bitter election cycle.“ Non-technical, easily understood, and powerful, IMO.

Bring back pen and paper…

The most recent story-line at Achewood has been truly oddball and depressing (start the story here ), but the punch line for today’s episode almost made it worthwhile.

Check out this collegiate paper in the PhilSci archives at Pitt. A funny and easy-to-read missive on the subject of Decision Theory, it discusses a possible Philisophical defense against Austin Powers’s mortal enemy.

Dr. Evil learns that a duplicate of Dr. Evil has been created. Upon learning this, how seriously should he take the hypothesis that he himself is that duplicate? I answer: very seriously. I defend a principle of indifference for self-locating belief which entails that after Dr. Evil learns that a duplicate has been created, he ought to have exactly the same degree of belief that he is Dr. Evil as that he is the duplicate. More generally, the principle shows that there is a sharp distinction between ordinary skeptical hypotheses, and self-locating skeptical hypotheses.